Playing With Art

One of my roommates bought a video game last week that's been occupying the TV screen so much I've actually caught up on my class assignments. I don't remember which game it is; it's that one where space marines/mercenaries blast away alien monsters from another star system. You know the game I'm talking about. However, all the alien-exploding and pixel-swearing made me think about what we do with our time. How can I snub video games when I myself am sitting in front of a computer screen right now? Well, technically, I may be doing something else as you read this, but at one point I was (am?) glued in front of my own universe--it's not 2-D, it's flat screen.

There is an argument to be made that video games are art. It's crazy. But maybe, just maybe, I can make a case.

First we have to throw out the argument that video games are just a product of capitalism/hedonism/consumerism/technology and therefore not art. Obviously capitalism is a huge driver of art. Not just in aspect of artists selling their work, but in that artists (or others) purchase material to be turned into art. Yes, a coffee table may just be a coffee table, but a skilled artists can use it for a piece in an instillation that moves people. Likewise, technology can be art as the same can be down with a 42-inch plasma TV.

In line with the coffee table example, much of art is about making decisions. You choose to use the blue color. You choose to photograph that person. You choose to cast James Woods (doesn't happen much, though). Video games are like that now more than ever. You can choose to explore different areas of the digital world. You can choose to jump or run or hijack a police helicopter. Now, yes, you are bound within the laws of the game--as I cannot put a football helmet on Mario, Luigi or Spyro ('90s shout out). But artists in the real world are bound by similar laws. They cannot make a floating painting or unmeltable ice cream statue.

This notion is further complicated when one takes into the consideration, players' abilities to "break" the rules of the games. Computer nerds (I use the term lovingly) and video game hackers can re-write the codes for the games after purchase and create what are called "mods". While likely a violation of the game's warranty, they can do things previously reserved for Neo in The Matrix movies. Players can flood cities, throw cars and fly like Superman to a Rage Against the Machine soundtrack--all acts completely digital, yet moving, and, dare I say, artistic.

Furthermore games have the profound ability to make players and viewers think, talk and find real-world applications. All art is a metaphor manifested. A piece of paper and paints mean nothing because they serve no value to anybody's survival. However, when put together and made into the Mona Lisa, society spends thousands of dollars for ownership rights and protection. Video games aren't real, but what they can inspire is real. Violent video games ask us if our world is violent. Tetris made us good packers. Sports games quantity real people into a "speed" rating of 95.

Video games bring people together as much as they separate us from each other. In the 1960s, like last week, some kids played by themselves. In 2009, there were several video game conventions, selling literally thousands and thousands of tickets. The game "Pong" could be played with two people. The game Modern Warfare II holds 50,000 players online, hourly.

But together or separate, people still feel things when they play video games. Even if the most common emotion is frustration, there are more than enough traditional artists who will say challenging a viewer with their work is worth more than ambivalent shrugs, or even unrelenting praise.

All this, though, needs to be ended with the fact that playing video games doesn't make one an artist any more than looking at a building makes me an architect. And not everybody who "creates" is an artist in my book. Sorry, Michael Bay, but you're on the outs. Art is about intention and results. Someone has to say, "I am creating art"--it doesn't have to be "good" art, but they need to believe it is art-- and someone else has to say, "that is art". So if someone makes a game meant to inspire, and a player feels inspired by a game, then, viola, we have another form of art.